Northwestern University has been given the speech code rating Yellow. Yellow light colleges and universities are those institutions with at least one ambiguous policy that too easily encourages administrative abuse and arbitrary application. Read more here.

Northwestern University denied recognition of a student chapter of Turning Point USA, claiming the group was too similar in nature to other student organizations, but backed down after FIRE wrote a letter to the university.

Use of the University’s Electronic Resources by any System User to send threatening or harassing content or messages or to view, download, retransmit, distribute or otherwise communicate content or messages that may violate the University’s Policy on Discrimination and Harassment and/or Policy on Sexual Harassment, is prohibited.

A bias incident is an act of con­duct, speech, or expression to which a bias motive is evident as a contributing factor (regardless of whether the act is criminal). Sanctions may be imposed for students found to have committed hate crimes and for bias incidents that involve conduct that violates laws or University policies, specifically including the University’s Discrimination and Harassment Policy.

Therefore, the University expects all community members who witness or experience an act of bias, hate, discrimination, or harassment to report these incidents to the University.

Unacceptable behavior. Demeaning, intimidating, threatening, or violent behaviors that affect the ability to learn, work, or live in the University environment depart from the standard for civility and respect. These behaviors have no place in the academic community.

Sexual harassment is any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature where: sexual favors are used or threatened to be used as a basis for academic or employment decisions (quid pro quo harassment); where the conduct creates a hostile, intimidating or offensive academic or working environment; where the conduct has the effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work performance; or where other verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct of a sexual nature is sufficiently severe, persistent, or pervasive to limit a person’s ability to participate in or benefit from an educational program or activity.

…

Some examples of sexual harassment may include: …

Remarks about a person’s gender, nonconformity with gender stereotypes, or sexual orientation

Sexual innuendoes or humor

Obscene gestures

Sexual graffiti, pictures, or posters

Sexually explicit profanity

Stalking or cyberbullying that is based on gender or sex

E-mail, texting (“sexting”) and Internet use that violates this policy

Allegations that may warrant an interim suspension include, but are not limited to: …Physical abuse of any person or action that threatens or endangers the emotional wellbeing, health, or safety of any person, including oneself.

Northwestern University is committed to the ideals of academic freedom and freedom of speech — to providing a learning environment that encourages a robust, stimulating, and thought-provoking exchange of ideas. Our commitment to addressing bias incidents is not intended to stifle these freedoms, nor will it be permitted to do so.

8. Students will be free from censorship in the publication and dissemination of their views as long as these are not represented as the views of Northwestern University and do not violate any University policies.

9. Student publications are free from any official action controlling editorial policy. Publications shall not bear the name of the University or purport to issue from it with­ out University approval.

10. Students are free to form, join, and participate in any group for intellectual, religious, social, economic, political, or cultural purposes.

11. A student is free, individually or in association with other individuals, to engage in all campus activities, exercising the right of a citizen of the community, state, and nation, provided he or she does not in any way purport to represent the University.

12. Students are free to use campus facilities for meetings of student­ chartered campus organizations, subject to policies as to time and manner governing the facility.

13. Students may invite and hear speakers of their choice on subjects of their choice, and approval will not be withheld by University officers for the purpose of censorship.

14. Students will have their views and welfare considered in the formation of University policy and will be consulted by or represented on University committees that affect students as members of the University community.

15. Students are free to assemble, to demonstrate, to communicate, and to protest, recognizing that freedom requires order, discipline, and responsibility and further recognizing the right of all faculty and students to pursue their legitimate goals without interference.

Intellectual Freedom: The University is a free and open forum for the expression of ideas, including viewpoints that are strange, unorthodox, or unpopular. The University network is the same. Network administrators place no official sanctions upon the expression of personal opinion on the network. However, such opinions may not be represented as the views of Northwestern University.

By Greg Piper at The College Fix Responding to criticism that he himself used microaggressions to criticize those who use microaggressions, Northwestern University President Morton Schapiro has apologized for his “idiots” and “lunatics” remarks last month… Read more here.

By Staff at The College Fix Northwestern University students can finally form a Turning Point USA chapter after the administration backed down from its insistence that the free-market group was impermissibly “similar” to another campus group… Read more here.

By Nina Burleigh at Newsweek During his 18 years as president of Lebanon Valley College during the middle of the past century, Clyde Lynch led the tiny Pennsylvania liberal arts institution through the tribulations of the Great Depression and World War II, then raised $550,000 to build a new gymnasium before he died in 1950. In gratitude, college trustees named that new building after him… Read more here.

By Jake New at Inside Higher Ed Looking to end “a system of privilege and oppression,” Northwestern University announced last week that most student groups on campus must begin admitting any interested students by next year or they will lose university funding. That could mean groups like the campus food magazine Spoon University and the student-run marketing firm Form & Function Marketing, which have in the past been selective, would have to take all who want to join… Read more here.

By Bradford Richardson at The Washington Times Several free speech advocacy groups are concerned about a Justice Department order that they say forces colleges and universities to violate the First Amendment… Read more here.

By Bob Unruh at WorldNetDaily The federal government has ruled that in order to meet its demands under Title IX, the law regulating equal access to educational opportunities at colleges and universities, the schools must violate the First Amendment, an activist organization has charged… Read more here.

By Hans Bader at Examiner On April 22, the Justice Department ordered the University of New Mexico adopt an unconstitutional speech code. It is demanding that the University label as “sexual harassment” all “unwelcome” sexual conduct, including “verbal” conduct (that is, speech). The university must encourage students to report it as such; and investigate it when it is reported… Read more here.

By Robby Soave at The Daily Beast A male student scored a major victory in his lawsuit against the University of Southern California, which kicked him off campus for a remarkable non-crime: failing to de-escalate an orgy. This was a crazy case, and the decision in his favor impugns not just USC, but the federal government’s entire strategy to combat rape by making colleges deal with it… Read more here.

By Chris Quintana at Albuquerque Journal University of New Mexico officials say the recent increase in federal Title IX reports shows more people are aware of the issue of sexual discrimination and violence, but free speech advocates say that complying with Title IX can stifle free speech protected by the First Amendment… Read more here.

By Bob Kellogg at One News Now The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has once again put together its Top 10 list of America’s institutions of learning that support unconstitutional speech codes. Read more here.

By Chris Nuelle at Campus Reform The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), recently released its annual list of universities that are notoriously bad for freedom of speech for 2016. Read more here.

By Ashe Schow at The Washington Examiner The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has released its annual list of colleges and universities that don’t uphold free speech for their students. Read more here.

By The Daily Advertiser at Shreveport Times PHILADELPHIA — Nearly half of America’s top colleges maintain speech codes that blatantly violate First Amendment standards, and this year Louisiana State University is one of them, according to a report from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). Read more here.

By Robby Soave at Reason.com Every year brings new examples of ruthless college administrators trampling the free expression rights of students and faculty, and 2015 was no different. Here are eight of the most notable campus censors I wrote about this year. Honorable Mention: Eric Posner Eric Posner, a professor of law at the University of Chicago, hasn’t actually censored anyone, so he doesn’t make the list. But he certainly provides a great deal of intellectual ammunition for people working to restrict free expression rights—including and especially university administrators, as well as the police. Whether he is arguing that 18-year-olds […]

By Jim Dey at The News-Gazette Back in February, Northwestern University Professor Laura Kipnis, disturbed about the campus environment concerning sexual harassment, emotional “triggers” and issues involving consent, wrote an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education. Headlined “Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe,” Kipnis’ piece challenged campus orthodoxy on these sensitive subjects. Some critics challenged her assertions, but two students did more than that. They filed a complaint alleging discrimination and retaliation with the university against Kipnis under federal law’s Title IX guidelines. The complaint was laughable on its face. But Kipnis endured months of administrative runaround trying to find out, […]

By Colleen Flaherty at Inside Higher Ed A second faculty member has resigned from Northwestern University over its medical school’s reaction to a provocative article published in a faculty journal. “It’s so petty — that’s what I kept saying — it’s a frickin’ blow job in 1978,” said Alice Dreger, a professor of medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern who gave her notice this week over the alleged ongoing censorship of the university medical humanities faculty journal Atrium, which has suspended publication after a funding cut. “Of course, it wound up as the Streisand effect, where everybody pays attention,” Dreger added. While Atrium is […]

By Jack Grove at Times Higher Education A leading US bioethicist has resigned her professorship in protest at censorship by university administrators. In an explosive resignation letter published on 24 August, Alice Dreger said that she could no longer work at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine because of its ongoing intervention in the faculty-produced journal Atrium, which she has guest edited. Dr Dreger, who held a professorship in clinical medicine humanities and bioethics, said that she had been appalled to hear that Atrium’s Bad Girls-themed Winter 2014 edition, which she edited, had been withdrawn online at the behest of […]

By Meghan Keenan at Red Alert Politics A Northwestern University professor resigned after a decade of work, citing an ongoing censorship fight with university administrators. “An institution in which the faculty are afraid to offend the dean is not an institution where I can in good conscience do my work,” Alice Dreger wrote in a letter of resignation submitted on Monday to Northwestern Provost Daniel Linzer. “Such an institution is not a ‘university,’ in the truest sense of that word.” Dreger, a bioethics professor at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine and guest editor of the faculty-produced publication Atrium, fought with […]

By Tyler Kingkade at The Huffington Post Medical humanities and bioethics professor Alice Dreger is resigning from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, citing the school’s censorship of a magazine she guest edited. Dreger, a noted researcher and author, submitted a resignation letter to Northwestern Provost Daniel Linzer on Monday. She said she’s stepping down because the university censored faculty magazine Atrium, forcing editors to take the digital issue offline after they published an article last March about a consensual blowjob involving a nurse in 1978. In the wake of intense criticism, the medical school allowed the magazine to resume publication and to repost its online […]

By Lisa Black at Chicago Tribune Northwestern University leaders are defending themselves for the second time this year against claims that they undermined academic freedom after faculty in the Feinberg School of Medicine complained that a risque article was removed for months from a website for the bioethics journal Atrium. The essay, called “Head Nurses,” was written by Syracuse University visiting humanities professor William Peace, who recounted a sexual experience with a nurse after he was hospitalized in 1978 with paralysis. He wrote that the nurse had acted compassionately to help him during rehabilitation in “a lost part of medical […]

By Meghan Keenan at Red Alert Politics For the second time in recent months, Northwestern University is under fire for censoring faculty. Digital issues of a magazine published annually by one of Northwestern’s medical school programs were taken down after running an an essay called “Head Nurses,” that described a nurse performing oral sex on a patient in 1978. Atrium is a publication of the Feinberg School of Medicine’s (FSM’s) Medical Humanities and Bioethics Program (MHB), and features content from authors at institutions around the country. The theme of the Winter 2014 issue was “Bad Girls,” and included an essay […]

By Blake Neff at The Daily Caller Professors at Northwestern University are locked in a bitter censorship battle with administrators that has a bizarre beginning: A professor’s vivid account of receiving oral sex from a nurse back in the 1970s.What do you think? As reported over at Inside Higher Ed, the feud began over a year ago with the publication of the Winter 2014 edition of Atrium, a bioethics journal published by the faculty of Northwestern’s medical school. The issue was titled “Bad Girls,” and dealt with the intersection between disability and sexuality.What do you think? While an odd topic, […]

By Tyler Kingkade at The Huffington Post Digital issues of an annual magazine published by Northwestern University’s Medical Humanities and Bioethics Program are now back online after school officials allegedly took them down in response to an essay that described a nurse giving a patient a blow job in 1978. Each Atrium issue is themed around a different topic, and the Winter 2104 issuefocused on the idea of “Bad Girls.” It included an essay by Syracuse University professor William Peace, who described an experience in a hospital (not Northwestern) in which a “head nurse” performed oral sex on him after […]

By Colleen Flaherty at Inside Higher Ed It was there and then it wasn’t: a controversial issue of a Northwestern University bioethics journal about sex and disability featuring one scholar’s account of receiving oral sex from a nurse as part of his rehabilitative process. Did Northwestern demand the removal of the journal essay from the university’s website and threaten to review all forthcoming issues prior to publication? That’s what faculty members claims happened last year. Northwestern, meanwhile, acknowledges that the archive issue of the journal was taken down, but isn’t saying why, or why it was later restored. The controversy […]

By Robby Soave at Reason Online Northwestern University’s squeamishness is only surpassed by its lack of respect for academic freedom, it seems. While the federally-mandated Title IX inquisition against Media Professor Laura Kipnis grabbed more national attention, Northwestern’s campaign of censorship against a faculty-produced bioethics journal is equally disturbing. The journal, Atrium, has always been produced without administrative oversight. Its February 2014 issue featured a “Bad Girls” theme and a slightly provocative cover. It also contained an essay by Syracuse University Professor William Peace, who described being paralyzed as a young man and receiving oral sex from a hospital nurse, […]

By Lisa Black at Chicago Tribune NU professor‘s essay fuels debate over faculty-student sexual relationships. A Northwestern University professor who wrote a controversial essay on how colleges police faculty-student relationships sparked a national debate over academic and sexual freedom. In doing so, she found herself the subject of an investigation into gender discrimination — one of the very issues she was writing about — after two students complained that she had created a “chilling effect” on their ability to report sexual misconduct. Communications professor Laura Kipnis recently was investigated for complaints that she violated the federal Title IX law against […]

By Robby Soave at Reason Online Developments over the last few weeks have brought a lot of attention to the sorry state of the American college campus.This essay in Vox, the ordeals of Laura Kipnis, and the usual spate of college outrage stories provoked condemnations from a diverse range of media commentators. It’s nice that everybody is so upset, but as I explained in arecent column for The Daily Beast, defeating campus censorship will take a lot more than winning hearts and minds. That’s because the policies of a runaway federal agency—the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, under the […]

By Robby Soave at The Daily Beast How obscure federal bureaucrats are squashing free expression on college campuses. A candid admission from an anonymous academic in Vox—“I’m a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me”—has higher ed spectators on all sides of the ideological spectrum concerned that students’ increasing aversion to offended-ness is forcing academics to dumb down their courses. But while just about everybody agrees there’s a problem, sheer outrage is incapable of solving it. That’s because federal bureaucrats have declared war on campus free speech and universities would be crazy to defy them, short of a Congressional […]

By Nick Gillespie at Reason Online There are many signs that the high tide of political correctness on college campuses is cresting. The scandal surrounding the treatment of Northwestern’s Laura Kipnis, a feminist professor of journalism who got into hot water for writing about her sexual activity in The Chronicle of Higher Education, has erupted into a full-scale what-the-fuck-is-wrong-with-today’s-puritanical-and-easily-offended students fury. Offended students filed a Title IX complaint against Kipnis, charging that her work created a “chilling effect.” Investigators found the complaint without merit, a decision widely hailed by anti-PC observers. Even writers at Jezebel, who are often quick to […]

By Greg Piper at The College Fix You may have seen that an ex-FIFA official recently cited an article inThe Onion – an obviously satirical publication – to defend himself against corruption charges. Well, I got snookered too, by a very clever “leaked” email purportedly obtained by the law blog Popehat. It claimed to have been sent to Northwestern University faculty by the Title IX coordinator, who was responding to Professor Laura Kipnis’s Chronicle of Higher Education essay in February decrying “sexual paranoia” on American college campuses (specifically professor-student relationships), and Kipnis’s followup essay Friday about the Title IX “inquisition” against her for writing that essay. Because there’s a lot […]

By Tyler Kingkade at The Huffington Post Northwestern University film professor Laura Kipnis was cleared in a Title IX investigation by the university on Friday, following graduate student complaints over an essay she published in February in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The article, titled “Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe,” discussed university policies governing sexual misconduct, student-faculty relationships and speech on campuses. It described lawsuits between a Northwestern philosophy professor and two students who accused him of sexual assault. Students took issue with the piece, saying Kipnis was describing a real-life scenarioand that her facts were off. They accused Kipnis of […]

Before DeMarcus Dobbs plays a game at Georgia, we know this much: He has 271 friends. He was at Whitney’s for a party over Memorial Day weekend. (But he doesn’t drink or smoke.) He broke Jake the Snake’s nose. (But it was Justin’s fault.) He has a girl named Anna who will always love him despite the paint handprint he put on her shirt. And he’d better bring his money next time he sees Bobby “cuz it’s on.” Welcome to the online social networking/self-profiling world of MySpace.com, Facebook.com and dozens of similar Internet sites. That emerging world has started […]

Luke Daquino, a former University at Albany lacrosse player, said he never understood why today’s students bare their souls on the Internet. The growing popularity of Web sites such as http://www.myspace.com, http://www.facebook.com and http://www.webshots.com allow the college crowd to share personal information and photographs all over the country. “None of that stuff for me,” said Daquino, who graduated last year. “You put way too much stuff on there, you get yourself in trouble. Especially in college, people put pictures of everything that goes on, and they go everywhere.” Some colleges are finding that out the hard way. Photos of alleged […]

By Sarah Halasaz and Alison Knezevich at The Daily Northwestern Associated Student Government senators voted to adjourn halfway through the group’s agenda at its weekly meeting Wednesday night after spending nearly three hours discussing misconduct recommendations. The Senate ultimately voted to uphold financial- and group-misconduct recommendations against the Objectivist Club for involvement in an anti-affirmative action bake sale Oct. 31. As a result the ASG-recognized group must schedule all programming and meeting places Winter Quarter through ASG’s Executive Committee. In addition, the group cannot use its Student Organization Finance Office account to fund events. The Executive Committee report charged the […]

By Dalia Naamani-Goldman at The Daily Northwestern Affirmative action event shut down; probes to see if groups violated policies The discount didn’t last long for minority students Friday. After making $31 in 2 1/2 hours, an affirmative action bake sale was shut down by a university administrator when she realized the event was not just a moneymaking endeavor. The bake sale, advertised as sponsored by the College Republicans and the Objectivist Club, was one of several sales that have been broken up by university administrators at campuses across the country such as Southern Methodist University in Texas and at the University […]

At Wake Forest University last fall, one of the few events designated as “mandatory” for freshman orientation was attendance at Blue Eyed, a filmed racism awareness workshop in which whites are abused, ridiculed, made to fail, and taught helpless passivity so that they can identify with “a person of color for a day.” In Swarthmore College’s dormitories, in the fall of 1998, first-year students were asked to line up by skin color, from lightest to darkest, and to step forward and talk about how they felt concerning their place in that line. Indeed, at almost all of our campuses, some […]

Northwestern University has agreed to revise many of its restrictions on football players’ free speech rights after the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) declared several provisions of its Football Handbook “unlawfully overbroad.” The NLRB’s opinion and Northwestern’s policy revisions granting football players greater freedom of speech come at a time of intense controversy regarding the right of college athletes to express themselves. In the wake of student-athlete protests and demonstrations during the national anthem, the NLRB’s decision sheds light on how tightly many colleges control the expression of their student-athletes. Under Northwestern’s Football Handbook, football players were prohibited from discussing […]

Last month, we reported on Northwestern University President Morton Schapiro’s comments about critics of safe spaces, microaggressions, and trigger warnings, in which he described people who think trigger warnings undermine the First Amendment as “lunatics,” and those who deny the existence of microaggressions as “idiots.” Now, Schapiro has said those comments were a mistake, but stands by his reasoning. We agree that they were a mistake, but contend that Schapiro’s reasoning—on microaggressions specifically—is equally mistaken. The Daily Northwestern reported Schapiro’s backtracking: “Did I mean to call people idiots? I certainly didn’t,” Schapiro told The Daily on Tuesday. “It was a […]

FIRE’s U.S. News & World Report “Best Colleges” Countdown continues today. We’re giving you a school-by-school analysis of just how well America’s “Best Colleges” do when it comes to protecting free speech on campus. Unfortunately, in today’s crop of top campuses, troubling speech codes abound. As part of FIRE’s fresh look at U.S. News’ top-ranked colleges, we used information from our Spotlight speech code database as well as information on other headline-making free speech news that applicants should know about before they apply to a given school. FIRE rates schools’ speech codes using a traffic light-inspired system. A “red light” […]

In the wake of the University of Chicago’s message to incoming students about academic freedom, administrators across the country have begun to weigh in on their own campuses to let students know their views on the issue. At Northwestern University (NU), president Morton Schapiro addressed new students at Monday’s convocation, and took a swipe at concerns over the phenomena of trigger warnings and microaggressions. According to The Daily Northwestern, Schapiro called those who deny the existence of microaggressions “idiots,” saying that microaggressions “cut you to the core.” Schapiro also had sharp words for those with concerns about the effect of […]

Every year, we at FIRE put out our list of the 10 worst colleges for free speech. And this year, surprisingly, half of the schools on the list earned their spot because they threatened faculty’s right to speak out in some way. One institution on that list was Northwestern University. Last year, Northwestern made headlines for its extraordinary attacks on academic freedom on two separate occasions. Once for its 72-day Title IX investigation into Professor Laura Kipnis’ public writings and comments about sexual politics on campus. And on another occasion, for its censorship of a faculty-produced bioethics journal that Northwestern […]

Prospective student groups’ applications for recognition are too often rejected by their universities on the basis that their missions are “too similar” to those of already recognized groups. This justification often fails to withstand basic scrutiny, and too easily allows administrators to enforce double standards when recognizing or rejecting club applications. Fortunately, one such student group, Northwestern University’s Turning Point USA (TPUSA) chapter, which was initially denied recognition on the basis that it was too similar to another group, has now been approved after FIRE intervened. Northwestern student Philip Hawkyard first sought recognition for a TPUSA chapter in October 2015. […]

When Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis published “Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe” in The Chronicle of Higher Education in February 2015, she didn’t expect she’d become the target of a Title IX investigation as a result. A former video artist and a self-described feminist, Kipnis researches and writes about the intersections of politics, gender, and psyche. It was this interest that led Kipnis to explore the changing politics of sex on college campuses in her essay for the Chronicle. Though she expected the article to spark debate due to her critique of Title IX’s expanding reach, Kipnis was caught by surprise […]

PHILADELPHIA, February 17, 2016—Nearly half of America’s top colleges maintain speech codes that blatantly violate First Amendment standards. But every year the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) takes a closer look at the past year’s incidents of college censorship to determine the nation’s 10 worst abusers of student and faculty free speech rights. This year’s list of the 10 worst colleges for free speech—published with detailed descriptions at The Huffington Post—includes many public colleges or universities bound by the First Amendment. Some of them, on the other hand, are private colleges that, though not required by the Constitution […]

If you’re a college student gearing up for Halloween tomorrow, we hope you’re scared. Not of the usual frightful fare—ghosts, haunted houses, terrible people who put their babies in pumpkins—but of the fact that your costume could get you in serious trouble. If this warning sounds freakishly familiar, it is. Over the years, FIRE has amassed a veritable witches’ brew of horror stories in which colleges and universities demand that students refrain from wearing “offensive” costumes. Public institutions violate the First Amendment’s guarantee of free expression when they do so. Courts have held that offensive—even racist—costumes and party themes are […]

Bioethicist and author Alice Dreger has resigned from her professorship at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, citing continuing censorship by university administrators. “An institution in which the faculty are afraid to offend the dean is not an institution where I can in good conscience do my work,” Dreger, a professor of medical education, medical humanities, and bioethics, wrote in a letter of resignation submitted last night to Northwestern Provost Daniel Linzer. “Such an institution is not a ‘university,’ in the truest sense of that word.” Dreger points specifically to Northwestern’s ongoing censorship of the faculty-produced medical journal Atrium, of […]

Professor Katie Watson, editor of the embattled Atrium journal at Northwestern University, has taken a strong stance against the university’s demand for prior review of the journal’s content. As we announced in a press release last week, officials at Northwestern University have demanded prior review of the faculty-produced bioethics journal Atrium after it published an essay by Syracuse University Professor William J. Peace describing—in the context of a discussion of disability and sexuality—how he received consensual oral sex from a nurse while undergoing rehabilitation after his paralysis at the age of 18. The theme of that issue of Atrium was […]

As we announced in this week’s press release, FIRE has intervened at Northwestern University following its censorship of the bioethics faculty publication Atrium and the creation of a new oversight committee to screen its content. Atrium, as we previously wrote, came under scrutiny after publishing an issue featuring an essay in which its author described how, in 1978, he had received consensual oral sex from a nurse while hospitalized for paralysis. The offending issue was removed from Atrium’s website for more than a year. FIRE has not yet received a response to our letter to Northwestern calling on the university […]

CHICAGO, June 16, 2015—Academic freedom is apparently no longer a part of Northwestern University’s “brand.” For over 14 months, administrators at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine (FSM) censored Atrium—a faculty-produced bioethics journal—because an issue featured content with a “Bad Girls” theme deemed too salacious for the university’s image. Northwestern is now requiring that future journal content be reviewed by university administrators prior to its publication. This is the second time in less than a month that Northwestern finds itself at the center of an academic freedom controversy over issues of sex and gender. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education […]

On Friday evening, Northwestern University finally cleared Professor Laura Kipnis of wrongdoing after a 72-day investigation into her public writing and comments about sexual politics on campus. The lengthy investigation was launched by the university’s Title IX Coordinator after two students filed complaints alleging that Kipnis’s essay published in The Chronicle of Higher Education discussing already-public details about sexual harassment investigations and lawsuits at Northwestern constituted “retaliation” and “chilled” students’ willingness to report harassment. As we at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) detailed on Friday, Kipnis exposed the investigation and the university’s unfair treatment towards her in […]

There are far too many true stories of universities investigating, punishing, or censoring discussions on matters of public concern. But among them, the ordeal that Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis has endured because of an article she wrote about sex-related issues on campus stands as one of the most ironic and perplexing. She shares all the absurd details in an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education today, and it is a must-read. In late February, Kipnis prompted a heated debate with an essay she penned for The Chronicle of Higher Education titled “Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe.” The article addressed […]

Duke University professor Jerry Hough has faced criticism in recent days following his comment on a New York Times editorial published on May 10 that some readers characterized as racist. FIRE is glad to see that—despite another race-related controversy just last month—Duke has apparently not taken action against Hough. But the university still seems not to appreciate how open discourse should function on campus. Hough posted his comment in response to a Times editorial titled “How Racism Doomed Baltimore.” He wrote, in part: In 1965 the Asians were discriminated against as least as badly as blacks. That was reflected in […]

It’s almost Halloween, and that means that college students across the country are waging war against costumes that they deem culturally insensitive or otherwise offensive. In an article for The Daily Caller today, FIRE Senior Vice President Robert Shibley takes a look at some of the party themes that have been landing college and university students in trouble lately. Robert leads with a jaw-dropping example: Northwestern University students are under fire for holding a “Jail N’ Bail”-themed literacy fundraiser with no apparent racial content because it “belittled” the problems faced by racial minorities and the poor. It’s one thing for […]

Last week, Northwestern University Dean of Students Burgwell J. Howard and other university actors sent an e-mail to the Northwestern community encouraging students to display sensitivity in their Halloween costume choices. This e-mail was a reaction to the outrage sparked by two white students dressing up in “blackface” last year. Howard provided students with guidelines to determine if their costume is “insensitive.” Wearing a funny costume? Is the humor based on “making fun” of real people, human traits or cultures? Wearing a historical costume? If this costume is meant to be historical, does it further misinformation or historical and cultural […]

Throughout the spring semester, FIRE is drawing special attention to the state of free speech at America’s top 25 national universities (as ranked by U.S. News & World Report). Today we review policies at Northwestern University, which FIRE has given a red-light rating for maintaining policies that clearly and substantially restrict free expression on campus. As with all private universities—which are not bound by the First Amendment, but are bound by the promises they make to students and faculty—we begin by examining the commitments Northwestern has made to free speech. Northwestern’s student handbook provides that students have the right “to […]